Growing up, family time was really important to both me and my parents. However, as time went on, my sister and I seemed to have less and less time to spend with mom and dad because we were both in school and had sports practice 24/7. We needed to find the perfect time to bond with the family and found that nothing worked better than food. Not forced family fun time over the weekend, not anything. Just food. What better way to bond with each other than over dinners like this?
Eating together every night has become very customary in my family. We’ve had so many memories at our dinner table; from laughing so hard you almost pee to discussions that make you reevaluate your life choices. I understand that it’s hard for people to give up personal time to eat dinner as a family, or to shift their schedules to make that a priority but the positives outweigh the downsides by a landslide. I mean some people argue that they bond during dinner by watching TV as a family. Think about that for a second and take a look at the very lively interaction of the family in the picture below. 🙂
Are you kidding me? First of all, you can’t bond over television, and second, you can reschedule your ME time to any other moment. Now, I realize that not all families are like this, but I have noticed a trend in the tendency to ignore how important family time is. It made me sad to hear that my friends don’t value family time as much as I do. After a while, I’ve found that just the simple idea of eating as a family can dramatically improve your relationships with them. This is similar to something I read recently that worked to bring the little yet beautiful things in life into focus. Things, like the joy of balancing on a curb, that people would otherwise overlook. So I tried to find a little thing in my life and shine the light that it deserves. Making the effort to bond with your loved ones is such a small and simple way to have a huge impact on both your relationships and mood. Everyone needs food to survive, so why not spend time eating together rather than apart?
-R
life and a side of fries 